Gaming bot detection: A systematic literature review

Abstract

In online games, some players employ programs (bots) that allow them to bypass game routines and effortlessly gain virtual resources. This practice leads to negative effects, such as reduced revenue for the game development companies and unfair treatment for ordinary players. Bot detection methods act as a counter measure for such players. This paper presents a systematic literature review of bot detection in online games. We mainly focus on games that allow resource accumulation for players between game sessions. For this, we summarize the existing literature, list categories of games ignored by the scientific community, review publicly available datasets, present the taxonomy of detection methods and provide future directions on this topic. The main goal of this paper is to summarize the existing literature and indicate gaps in the body of knowledge.